Emergent literacy is the term used to describe the reading and writing experiences of young children before they learn to write and read conventionally, and it is important for the construction of children’s early reading skills and the enhancement of their later reading performance. The systematic review was conducted to examine the effectiveness of children’s interactive reading apps in promoting emergent literacy for children between the ages of three and eight over the last decade (2013-2022). A total of 50 studies were included in this review, and it can be concluded that multimedia features (e.g., a dictionary, background music, and animated pictures) in children’s interactive reading apps are effective for enhancing emergent literacy. Conversely, interactive functions (such as games and hotspots) may distract children’s attention, leading to poor reading performances. This review also demonstrated the positive effects of children’s interactive reading apps on improving their learning outcomes and behavior. In addition, the results indicated that well-designed apps could promote children’s emerging literacy skills. However, more in-depth studies will be required in the future to provide designers with a well-defined guideline for designing reading apps for children.

Existing empirical research has demonstrated the positive effects of flipping the classroom to improve student motivation and achievement by flipping in-class learning content to pre-class. However, the flipped classroom approach requires that students be engaged and motivated in the pre-class stage to ensure that the in-class learning activities run smoothly. Previous studies have highlighted the difficulties that students often encounter when trying to learn Chinese characters in Chinese language classes, especially those who are in the early stages of learning the language. Therefore, in this study, a gamified interactive e-book was developed and used in a flipped classroom for Chinese character learning. To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, a pre-test and post-test control group experimental design was used. The participants were 90 s-grade students from a public primary school in Zhengzhou, China, who were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group: the students who used a gamified interactive e-book in a Chinese character learning flipped classroom (GIEFC group), the students who used a traditional flipped classroom (TFC group), and the students who used a traditional teaching classroom (TTC group). The experimental results indicated that students in the GIEFC group scored higher than those in the TFC and TTC groups in terms of learning achievements and motivation. In addition, the experimental results also demonstrated the positive effects of gamified interactive e-books in flipped classroom learning. Future research could explore a variety of different types of game elements as well as the extension of research to other subjects.

Studying China's Tang poetry is a crucially integrated part of the language curriculum in primary schools because it is an important part of its cultural heritage and classical literature. However, due to the fact that Tang poetry is written in classical Chinese, which is quite different from modern Chinese Mandarin, and the complex categories of this poetry style, learning Tang poetry can be a challenging experience for many students. To address this problem, this study developed an interactive multimodal application based on the cognitive-affective theory of learning with media to learn Tang poetry in an interactive way. In order to assess the effectiveness of this method, a pretest-posttest control group experiment was conducted. The experiment included eighty third-grade students randomly and equally divided into experimental and control groups from an elementary school in Xinzheng, Henan Province, to test (1) whether the interactive multimodal application improves students' reading comprehension of Tang poetry and (2) whether the application enhances students' intrinsic and/or extrinsic motivation in learning Tang poetry. A multimodal interactive application was used by the experimental group to learn Tang poetry, while the control group used a traditional classroom method. According to the study's findings, it was found that students' intrinsic motivation and comprehension of Tang poetry improved through the use of the interactive multimodal application mode.

Mathematical word problem performance is a crucial indicator of students’ mathematical abilities, and enhancing mathematical reading comprehension and reading motivation is key. This study examines the impact of a gamified interactive e-book (GIEB) that incorporates metacognitive reading strategies on reading motivation, mathematical reading comprehension, and word problem performance among fifth-grade elementary students. Using a quasi-experimental design, the experimental group learned through the GIEB, while the control group received traditional metacognitive reading strategy instruction. The results show that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in reading motivation, mathematical reading comprehension, and word problem performance. GIEB, through strategies such as prediction, monitoring, and reflection, improved students’ ability to analyze information, while its integration of immediate feedback and engaging design effectively stimulated students’ intrinsic motivation to learn, strengthening their interest and focus on learning. This study confirms the critical role of reading motivation and mathematical reading comprehension in word problem learning and supports the application of Self-Determination Theory in education. It provides practical evidence for the use of digital tools to enhance educational quality and aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4, promoting the development of equitable and high-quality education. However, the generalizability of the findings may be limited to Chinese elementary school students, and future research is needed to validate the results in other cultural or educational contexts.